Liberty, Janet Wong
On Mr. Paine’s Rights of Man, Philip Freneau (excerpts)
America For Me, Henry Van Dyke
This Land is Your Land, Woody Guthrie
Home on the Range
Chief Seattle’s Reply to President Pierce’s Offer to Buy His Tribe’s Lands (excerpts)
Manahatta, Walt Whitman
The New Colossus, Emma Lazarus
Let America Be America Again, Langston Hughes
On the Pulse of the Morning, Maya Angelou
America The Beautiful, Katharine Lee Bates
God Bless America, Irving Berlin
* * *
Arrivals, David Whyte
Columbus, Ogden Nash
Indian Names, Lydia Sigourney
Wade in the Water
Liberty
by Janet Wong
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On Mr. Paine’s Rights of Man (Excerpts)
by Philip Freneau
Thus briefly sketched the sacred rights
of man,
How inconsistent with the royal plan!
Which for itself exclusive honor craves,
Where some are masters born, and
millions slaves . . . .
Roused by the reason of his manly page,
Once more shall Paine a listening world
engage:
From Reason’s source, a bold reform he brings,
In raising up mankind, he pulls down kings, . . .
Be ours the task the ambitious to
restrain,
And this great lesson teach–that kings
are vain;
That warring realms to certain ruin
haste,
That kings subsist by war, and wars are
waste:
So shall our nation, formed on Virtue’s
plan,
Remain the guardian of the Rights of
Man,
A vast republic, famed through every
clime,
Without a king, to see the end of time.
America For Me
by Henry Van Dyke
‘TIS fine to see the Old World, and travel up and down
Among the famous palaces and cities of renown,
To admire the crumbly castles and the statues of the kings,
But now I think I’ve had enough of antiquated things.
So it’s home again, and home again, America for me!
My heart is turning home again, and there I long to be,
In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars!
Oh, London is a man’s town, there’s power in the air;
And Paris is a woman’s town, with flowers in her hair;
And it’s sweet to dream in Venice, and it’s great to study Rome;
But when it comes to living there is no place like home.
I like the German fir-woods, in green battalions drilled;
I like the gardens of Versailles with flashing fountains filled;
But, oh, to take your hand, my dear, and ramble for a day
In the friendly western woodland where Nature has her way!
I know that Europe’s wonderful, yet something seems to lack!
The Past is too much with her, and the people looking back.
But the glory of the Present is to make the Future free,
We love our land for what she is and what she is to be.
Oh, it’s home again, and home again, America for me!
I want a ship that’s westward bound to plough the rolling sea,
To the blessed Land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars
This Land is Your Land
by Woody Guthrie
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Home on the Range
(Author Unknown )
Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam,
Where the deer and the antelope play;
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the skies are not cloudy all day.
Oh, give me a land where the bright diamond sand
Flows leisurely down the stream;
Where the graceful white swan goes gliding along
Like a maid in a heavenly dream.
Home, home on the range,
Where the deer and the antelope play;
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the skies are not cloudy all day.
How often at night when the heavens are bright
With the light of the glittering stars,
Have I stood here amazed and asked as I gazed
If their glory exceeds that of ours.
Home, home on the range,
Where the deer and the antelope play;
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the skies are not cloudy all day.
Oh, I love these wild flowers in this dear land of ours;
The curlew I love to hear scream;
And I love the white rocks and the antelope flocks
That graze on the mountain-tops green.
Home, home on the range,
Where the deer and the antelope play;
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the skies are not cloudy all day.
Where the air is so pure, the zephyrs so free,
The breezes so balmy and light,
That I would not exchange my home on the range
For all the cities so bright.
Home, home on the range,
Where the deer and the antelope play;
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the skies are not cloudy all day.
Chief Seattle’s Reply to President Pierce’s
Offer to Buy His Tribe’s Lands (Excerpts)
The Great Chief in Washington sends word that he
wishes to buy our land.
The idea is strange to us. How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land?
If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?
And while we do not own it, this land is sacred to us. This shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water but the blood of our ancestors.
To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors — the dreams of our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit, and the visions of our medicine men, and is written in the hearts of our people.
Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its green valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, valleys, lakes and bays, and ever yearn in tender affection over the living, and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console, and comfort them.
Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people.
And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe who still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone.
Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds.
The White Man must teach his children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of the grandfathers and grandmothers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children, as we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of earth. If men do not respect the ground, they do not respect themselves.
Manahatta
by Walt Whitman
I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name.
Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly,
musical, self-sufficient.
I see that the word of my city is that word from of old,
Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb,
Rich, hemm’d thick all around with sailships and steamships, an
island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,
Numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender, strong,
light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies,
Tides swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward sundown,
The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining
islands, the heights, the villas,
The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, the
ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers well-model’d,
The down-town streets, the jobbers’ houses of business, the houses
of business of the ship-merchants and money-brokers, the
river-streets,
Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week,
The carts hauling goods, the manly race of drivers of horses, the
brown-faced sailors,
The summer air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing clouds aloft,
The winter snows, the sleigh-bells, the broken ice in the river,
passing along up or down with the flood-tide or ebb-tide,
The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form’d,
beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes,
Trottoirs throng’d, vehicles, Broadway, the women, the shops and shows,
A million people–manners free and superb–open voices–hospitality–
the most courageous and friendly young men,
City of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires and masts!
City nested in bays! my city!
The New Colossus
by Emma Lazarus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Let America Be America Again
by Langston Hughes
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On the Pulse of Morning
by Maya Angelous
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America The Beautiful
by Katharine Lee Bates
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God Bless America
by Irvin Berlin
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